The Spa of Your Inner Mind

Excerpted from Michelle Beaudry's book Do for your mind what a day spa does for your body.

Welcome to The Spa of Your Inner Mind

Imagine that your client's subconscious mind has its own health resort full of specialists, practitioners, helpers, and advisors of all kinds. And imagine that in its hundreds of treatment rooms, work can be processed in real time in the native language of the subconscious: images and emotions. The Spa of Your Inner Mind is an hypnosis technique that comprises hundreds of treatment rooms like Healing, Detoxification, Forgiveness, Meet Your Fat Cells, Making Peace with The Past, and the Juice Bar.

No room is ever the same experience twice. No two clients have the same experience in any one room. A first visit to, for example, the Healing Room may be for medical healing, the next for spiritual, the next emotional, or any combination. Working with your client in her Spa adds a flexibility to your clinical work unavailable through any other hypnosis technique. It precludes you from having to guess whether your client's presenting issue is in fact representative of the real work that needs to be done.

How It Works (Hint, It's Unguided Imagery)

Once she's in trance, you have the client construct her Spa, then enter into its rooms. She enters each room alone and has her experience. And this gives the Spa its greatest attribute: insight. The client experiences for herself, not just guesses, exactly what is going on with her at the subconscious level. She can find out precisely why she's overweight, why she still smokes, why she has any number of stress related symptoms, and so forth.

The technique is unguided imagery. You don't tell the client what's awaiting her in the rooms or what to do when she gets inside. Rather, you set forth the task as the name of the room. Never enter the room with the client. She goes in alone and gets what she gets. If she needs specialists or technicians, she'll have them. If she needs procedures or treatments, she'll have them.

If she needs to talk to anyone, they'll appear. She finds the room, enters, and has her experience. She will automatically tailor her experience to her needs. In other words, the fewer instructions you give her, the better. She can talk about what's happening as it happens, after she exits the room, or not at all.

The clear advantage of unguided imagery is that she creates the exact healing situation, process, or experience she needs in the privacy of her own thoughts. Does she need emotional healing? spiritual? physical? The Spa technique allows her to tailor the healing work herself, with an accuracy no one else can create. After all, you're not her. You're you. Why guess what's going on

with your client when you can know? Why wonder if her presenting issue is what she's really there for?

Each person visiting their Spa, even in a group setting, gets exactly the individual, tailored experience they need, even when all have been assigned the same task, e.g., "Go into the Healing Room," or "Go into the Consultation Room and speak to God."

Creating Rooms

Best of all, Spa rooms can be created for the client as needed. Is the client a Christian who feels ignored by God? Create a Consultation room, and let the client experience talking directly to God. Believe me, higher powers are happy to take oh, five minutes out of their busy eternity to communicate with us humans.

Is your client grieving? Take her to a Consultation room where she can talk to her departed loved ones. Typically, they tell her they love her, they'll be seeing her again soon enough, and it's time to get on with her life.

However much your client may already know this on a conscious level, having the actual experience is far more evocative of change than merely talking about it, or being told to "just get over it."

Is your client's Fear part still causing her to overeat? Create a Consultation room and let them both talk face to face. The Parts technique typically involves the hypnotist talking to the part. Using the Spa, the client can negotiate with the Part directly. Or to numerous Parts at the same time. You can see the advantage here. Your client processes work herself, directly, hands-on,

in real time.

Rooms can be created ad hoc at a moment's notice, precisely tailored to your client's unique combination of issues. Simply name the room using the task: in Detox, she gets detoxified. In Healing, she gets healing. And so forth.

Here are a few examples of rooms created specifically for individual clients: Room of Being Completely Safe, Chakra Realignment, Room of Filling Up Emptiness, Room of Being Slender and Being Completely Safe, and Room of How It Feels To Be Normal. You get the idea.

Use your client's own phrasing to name the room. As she tells you of her insights, take those very words and create a room. For instance, if a client remarks about a possible career change, "I need to face my fear and do it anyway," then send her into a room called, "Facing Your Fears and Doing It Anyway."

Another example: I needed a shortcut to discern the issues underpinning a minor health problem of mine. So, I had a fellow hypnotist take me to a room called, "The Room of Curing (place name of disorder here)." And boom! I knew at once the event the disorder was tied to, why it was so tied, and exactly how to process its resolution.

And From There

Once the Spa has been created and your client has visited at least the Healing Room, you then use all of the techniques you already use, like Regression To Cause, Forgiveness, Parts, or Upgrades. In other words, the Spa easily accommodates all of the other hypnosis techniques you're already using. It does not replace a one of them. It is another useful tool for your toolkit.

The insights gained and work processed from a Spa experience leads to the internal changes your clients are paying you to help them achieve. Most of your clients are female, they already love going to spas, and they'll grasp the concept easily and quickly. As a client of mine once said, "I love it because it is my Spa." And it was, for she'd designed it in her own mind.

The Spa done correctly will recharge positive energy into your client, uplifting them. They will leave your office happier, less exhausted, and better drivers.

About the Author

Written by Michelle Beaudry, CHt, author of, "The Spa of Your Inner Mind," and "The Forgiveness Pyramid," both available at www.banyanhypnosismall.com/michellebeaudry. Miss Beaudry is an adjunct faculty member of the National Guild of Hypnotists, a graduate of the Omni Hypnosis Training Center with additional studies in Ericksonian hypnosis at Phoenix Development, and is a member of the Innovative Hypnosis Research Group, the Hypnosis Education Association, and the Conscious Awareness Network.